Big Ten basketball is nothing if not predictable, in at least one sense - the middle of the league is going to spend the first couple months of the calendar year punishing one another. The question is, how big is that middle piece?
At the bottom end, it seems safe to say that Minnesota is not good at 1-4 in conference play and 7-8 overall. Nebraska is not much better, at 2-5 and 9-9. At the top, Purdue is obviously the class of the field, with their lone loss of the season at home to Rutgers by a single point.